


No Promises

by fantasticalbird



Series: Golden Tattoo [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Constantine (Comic), Constantine: The Hellblazer (Comics)
Genre: Breakups, Demonic Possession, Jason In France, M/M, Magic, Oscar Wilde - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 00:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14800616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fantasticalbird/pseuds/fantasticalbird
Summary: “We should stop doing this, love.” John’s too much of a coward to say it in person, so he calls Jason instead.





	No Promises

It was only ever supposed to be once. That was what John had told himself after that night in London. Covered in glitter, and radiating an ancient magic that made his fingers numb. Only once when he sent Jason on his way, out the door and into the night. 

But then John got a call from California, and Jason sounded so small and unsure. He was covered in blood when John got there. Some of it his own, most of it belonging to someone else. Then there was a call from Gotham, another from China. They didn’t move in frequency, it wasn’t like Jason fell into the charm of the pit more and more. It was just, it was just, he could trust John. A concept that was foreign and laughable. There was nothing to trust about John Constantine. 

Jason’s small and unsure voice on the other line didn’t seem to care, or know the difference. 

Mornings where John pulled on his clothes and left started turning into rooftop brunches, then lunches, a few days in Tokyo here, a job in Milan there. The days stretch to weeks at a time where John convinces Jason he doesn’t have anything better to do than globe trot and follow where the younger man leads. 

“I could help with that, you know love?” John offers one morning. It’s early, there’s a haze of purple painting the bedsheets, a sliver of dawn painting Jason’s tired face. He’s shaking a bit, but John pretends he doesn’t notice. He refrains from rubbing his hands down his arms to still the tremors. Jason pulls back and grabs a cigarette, bites it between his teeth before letting out a long sigh. 

“Thanks.” 

It’s the first piece in a series of walls that come down, that suddenly show a stark portrait of Jason Todd. Vastly different from anything John had heard through the grapevine, from what he could remember hearing from the rest of Gotham’s bleak crew. The hard nosed and brutal mercenary is nowhere to be found when Jason leaves a scrawled letter on the bedside table of a hotel in Istanbul, an apology so he can go and help an old friend. When he drags John up at the ass crack of dawn, wearing sunglasses and a hangover that could last for days to an old book shop in Paris. 

The cold blooded killer is gone; a mirage it seems, when Jason drags John through the stacks of the oldest bookstore in France and starts looking through first editions of Jane Austin. Kisses him against an oak shelf, surrounded by the scent of dust and old pages. “Never took your for the reading type.” John grins against Jason’s mouth, sunglasses crooked over his eyes. 

“It’s called being cultured. You should try it sometime.” 

“Who says I’m not cultured, hm?” John hums, but kisses Jason again before he can say anything back. They spend the day walking around Paris in the rain. There’s almost no one out because its bloody miserable, wet and a cold that could seep into your bones. John would try and remember more of it, if he knew things were going to go downhill so quickly afterwards. But, in his memories it’s just a haze of colors, and Jason’s infectious smile, the arch of his brow as he tells John about growing up in Gotham, asks him about death like it’s just another facet to being cultured. It all bleeds together like a painting dipped in turpentine, blending together until there’s nothing left but a mass of grey and a hole in John’s stomach. 

: : : 

“We should stop doing this, love.” John’s too much of a coward to say it in person, so he calls Jason instead. He’s just come back from off world, a concept that still boggles John’s mind. Aliens, and space, and other planets seem impossible, even when he’s walking through portals and taking a dip in hell dimensions. Jason’s in Gotham, and John’s in London, but he swears he can feel that snapping on the back of his neck like an incessant reminder. 

He ignores it, it’ll probably burn later, but pain isn’t anything new, and this is best. John had been deluded, selfishly pretending that they would be okay, that fate, and destiny, and heaven and hell could sway the path they were on. Selfishness was what kept John going back to Jason, and it was selflessness that was breaking it apart. He was sure. 

There’s a hitch in Jason’s breath, and John prepares for the onslaught of curses, the verbal shit kicking he knew would replace the physical one he was cowardly avoiding. “Exorcism went that badly huh?” John doesn’t know when Jason learned to read him so well, but his stomach curls into a knot as his shoulders sag. 

“I’m a goddamn menace, and there’s more on the line that just your life.” Like somehow, it will put it all in perspective. Jason doesn’t even get to say anything else before John hangs up the phone. He ignores the handful of calls he gets back, it’s for the best he’s sure. 

: : : 

Months pass without a peep. Red Hood drops off the radar. He crops up in under the breath conversations in unsavory neighborhoods, in product movement around the globe. John’s got enough unsavory contacts across both the underworld and the underworld that he gets to keep up with what Jason’s up to. Not in leaps and bounds, but enough to know that he’s doing ok, and that’s enough for John. 

Every now and then he dreams about Paris. Can smell the musk of Jason’s cologne, his leather jacket, the faint tendrils of cigarette smoke. He can picture his voice, the rumble of his chest. Glowing jade green eyes that fade into sea blue, the little scar on his eyebrow that he got long before Gotham or Bruce or the Joker sunk their claws into him. He wakes up feeling sick everytime, his heart hammering and his neck burning. 

It feels like waking from a nightmare, and he hates it. 

Mesopotamian demons are the worst, mesopotamian magic is the worst. The whole god forsaken thing is the worst, as far as John is concerned. Even though he knows God was involved in almost all of it. Everything is in latin, and there’s clawing, blood, vomit. Items go flying around the tiny apartment, the body of the little girl he’s been asked to help bending in two as John works. He thinks she’s not going to make it, is convinced when he finally pulls the thing out of her. But her wet eyes and heaving chest makes him a liar again, and he’s too tired and jangled to feel bad about it. 

He walks back to the small inn he’s staying in, lets the Moroccan sun beat down on his back and push away the chill of the demon. Ignores the throbbing of his arm where she had bitten him hard enough to draw blood when he walks up the stairs to his room. He shoves open the door and tosses his keys on the little dish next to the doorway. He almost doesn’t notice the other body in the room, but then there’s that incessant buzzing again, and before he can register the sensation Jason drawls out “ I was in the neighborhood, thought I’d drop by.” 

John turns to look at him, expects to find Jason’s glowing aura greeting him, pushing this boldness. Instead, he just sees crystalline eyes, an innocent tilt of his head as he sits in a chair by the window, a silver wrapped hand rolled cigarette between his fingers. “How’d you even convince them to let you in? I told them no guests.” John sighs, pries his jacket off and rests it on the small sofa. Grabs the bottle of scotch from the table and two glasses as Jason grins and begins reciting something in Arabic. “Show off.” John mumbles, and hands the glass to Jason. 

It’s an attempted truce, a half-baked apology. Jason accepts the glass, and peers into it like it might leap out and choke him, his mood shifting. John can see bricks that had fallen down at his feet suddenly move back into place. He wanted to try and stamp it out, take that hard look off of Jason’s face, but he can’t. John can’t say anything because Jason’s not supposed to be here, and it’s all a muddied mess of selfishness now. “You could have told me.” 

“I’m sorry love, but you knew it wasn’t going to last forever.’ John scrolls through the rolodex of shitty magic breakup lines he’s used. But Jason’s eyes are sharp, and they suck the breath out of his lungs. It’s a predatory look, one he imagines men greater than John have seen before their final moments. It’s not Jason, he realizes then, not really, it’s Red Hood, and Robin, and the long lost son of Bruce Wayne. All those hurts, and John’s added to them, and he feels the weight of guilt that he thought he’d pitted out of his heart years ago. 

But Jason is like that, weedling into John’s life, and refusing to leave. 

“Don’t.” Jason’s on his feet, consciously trying not to look as intimidating as he wants to feel. “You don’t get to decide things for me, my life, my soul, my fate.” There’s a hurt there, deep and gashed open, like an autopsy scar reopened. 

“It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, koombayas and the good guys riding off into the sunset.” John knows Jason knows that already. They’ve both seen enough death and destruction, mayhem, and pain to know that. The least John can do, is not pretend that Jason is naive to the unfairness of the world.

“Doesn’t it keep you up at night?” Jason’s moving across the room, whiskey abandoned on the low glass table. “You can’t tell me you don’t feel it.” He’s got one thick hand wrapped around the back of John’s neck, and he’s close enough that John can smell the red tea he drank before John got here. Another puzzle piece slotting into place of a boy who’s lived too many lives. “That you don’t want it.” His eyes get soft, and John feels the wave of implications in that statement. It’s not about wanting this. About not wanting late nights with John’s hands wrapped around a thread of magic, of Jason under his hands, pulling each tantalizing moan out. 

It’s about wanting Jason. All of him, the good, the bad, the magic and the lost kid who’s still figuring it out. “Jay,” It’s meant to be a warning, a yellow light to all of this, but it sounds like a whine. Then that big paw is pulling John close, and Jason’s lips are on his, and he knows, he knows, it’s over. There’s no running from this. As soon as he feels that familiar warmth, he wonders how he ever lived without it. 

They manage to get into the bedroom, a tangle of limbs. John manages to smack a side table with his shin and laughs a cuss into Jason’s mouth, but they make it to the bed mostly unscathed. John slides between Jason’s spread legs, undoes his pants without preamble. Jason lifts his hips and John tugs them down, then stops when he sees the peak of black ink on warm skin. “What’s this then?” 

Jason props himself on his elbows and watches John pull his jeans down the rest of the way, exposing the tattoo on his thigh that certainly wasn’t there the last time John saw Jason like this. It wraps around the top of his thigh, dips with the heavy muscle there, rose curling around his inner thigh. John feels his mouth go dry, arousal burning around him. 

The only way to get rid of a temptation, is to yield to it. 

In that moment, they’re back in that bookstore, Jason kneeling to look at the bottom row of books, so much like a happy little kid. John’s standing above him, and they’re debating. “I am so cultured you brat.” John plucks a book from the top shelf. “We can’t all have that millionaire money upbringing.” It produces a snort out of Jason, instead of a snarl. John takes it as a win. “I like good old Oscar, bloke did what he wanted and said stuff it to the man. What’s not to like?” 

“You’re only saying that because he’s irish.” Jason grabs a book and grins.

“The only way to get rid of a temptation, is to yield to it. The man was not only an occultist, but a hedonist. What’s there not to like?” 

“I got it off world.” Jason mumbles. Got it right before John called him and pulled the pin on all of this, decided Jason was too dumb to know what he wanted, too naive to know the risks in a game he had already lost only a few years previously. “ A reminder to fight for what I want.” 

John’s lips are already brushing over the thick muscle of his thigh, trailing over the words. He hooks his hands around the waist band of Jason’s boxers, pulls them down slowly. “And what do you want love?” John whispers into his skin, moans at the hands that find their way into his short blonde hair, the way Jason tips his head to the side when John drags his stubbled chin down the inside of his thigh. 

“I want you, you idiot.” He growls, tugs at John’s hair. As John tips his head and swallows Jason down, remember the way he hisses and digs the heel of his hand between his teeth, he thinks yeah, yeah, he wants Jason too. Maybe old Oscar had been right all along, the only way to live life was to yield to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Part two of this little series. They are being posted out of order, so I hope you can forgive it. I'm just writing them as they come to me. As always, thanks to the lovely OhMcGee for prompting me to write this <3 You're the best!
> 
> No real beta, so please forgive the mistakes. Let me know if there are any really awful ones.


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